Can Kentucky Trust Senate Candidate Grimes On Guns?

Can Kentucky Trust Senate Candidate Grimes On Guns?

Kentucky Democrat Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes has made quite the show of being a Second Amendment supporter in hopes of wooing some support from gun owners in conservative Kentucky, but campaign memos designed to help Grimes prep for interviews with news media in the state show that she is actually in favor of passing more pointless gun control laws.

One heading in the memo, labeled “GUN COMMERICAL – DISAGREE WITH PRESIDENT ON GUNS,” directs Grimes to say she disagrees with Obama on gun control. “We shouldn’t be banning guns based on things like their grips as a bill supported by Obama tried to do,” reads one bullet point. The heading refers to a TV ad Grimes released last month, which shows the Democrat shooting clay pigeons in a field while her voiceover rebuts charges from her Republican opponent, Sen. Mitch McConnell. “I’m not Barack Obama,” Grimes says, lowering her shotgun and turning toward the camera. “I disagree with him on guns, coal, and the EPA.”

But at the editorial board meeting, Grimes is encouraged—”ONLY IF PUSHED,” the memo insists—to scale back the red-meat rhetoric. She’s directed to concede that guns should be kept out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill and that she believes in “strengthening our background check system” and “putting more money into education” on gun safety. The memo for the meeting with the Enquirer staff uses the exact same language on guns. There is an additional heading on the issue of “closing the gun show loophole,” though there appear to be no talking points about that topic.